The integrated circuit foundry business has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. To provide high productivity and responsive customer service, the various departments and groups within a foundry organization desire a logical, intuitive organization of data to enable them to quickly locate information relating to technical topics of interest.
The prior art data structure used in foundry environments required significant processing before the database could be used for long-term and mid-term forecasting. The prior art data structure included two levels: a very abstract high level, and a very detailed low level. Prior art data structures were not appropriate for enterprise supply chain management, pricing/cost maintenance, tape out services to customers, or technical document management. Prior art data structures required a high maintenance effort. Further, these data structures did not provide proper data ownership or a maintenance process.